"The world... ravaged... the sun beat down on the carbon stricken rock. Civilisation... a distant memory. Human-robot sex... the norm. Each day, every day, survival and ... how? this-thus."

A not too distant, distant too hot near-future.

Wednesday, 12 January 2011

Heart of Darkness

He who makes a beast of himself gets rid of the pain of being a man.

Samuel Johnson

The horror! The horror! as Brando's character, Colonel Kurtz, intoned, in perhaps the definitive exemplar of the horrors-of-war genre film, Apocalypse Now. Superficially, it may appear to be a late acknowledgement of his “having gone native”; however this brief, duplicate locution should properly be viewed, not as an admission of a socio-geographic acclimatisation to the amoral mores of “local savages” per se; but rather the peeling façades of civilisation to reveal a brutish state of being whose potentiality lay resident in all of us, quietly radiating a dark light. Such were my thoughts as I completed my year-end tax returns somewhere near dawn.

22 comments:

These stories of going "native" can be found scattered all over the British Empire. They are fascinating...I don't know where I come down on what it says about the morality of natives. I agree completely with latent savagery bit, but these episodes almost always mimiced local behavior.

I'm sure you know the story of Breaker Morant, but the most interesting aspect of that story was not George and them but Taylor...a lot of the crap they were doing was at Taylor's behest. He'd set himself up as basically a local cheifton in the Zautspanwhatever.

The transgressive is, in some twisted way, an affirmation of existence. Modern day examples of troops “gone wild” in Vietnam and Iraq, to name two modern instances, are testament to this. I believe. What are we really capable of once conventions are set aside? Yet, the acting of setting something aside is also – implicitly – an act of confirmation. It has an initial, if not sustainable, logic. This is not to condone such extremes, rather the suggestion that they are understandable – can be comprehend – on an existential basis. And by “existential” I refer not to an obscure philosophical doctrine or thesis, but that we all share something in common which is beyond reason and yet is the soil in which reason grows or dies. Okay, that's a bit cryptic. You raise an interesting perspective. May be later I will come back and flesh this response out into a more satisfying form. One final note: my intention was to suggest – though somewhat indirectly – that Conrad was not making a racial point; nor indeed the film, contra suggestions made by certain academics. Thank you for your comments and kind words.

My brain stuttered when it read the adjective "pretzelish". Is this some obscure reference to the works of a hitherto neglected Russian dissident academic perhaps? Eventually the penny dropped - so-to-speak. May be I should think about renaming myself Colonel Klutz? Fantastic: that dough-based juxtaposition has made my day.

When I read about some of the terrible things apparently quiet ordinary people - “ordinary” not in pejorative sense – commit, I wonder how much by chance; by circumstance and fortune of association, that I find such acts impossible for me? The neighbour interviewed at the crime scene says, “He was very polite, he was an active member of our Neighbourhood Watch … but he always kept himself to himself.” What if things had turned out different for me? In another existence, could I really categorically state I would never, potentially, capable of what I presently find morally repugnant? I don't know, for sure, that is. But I'm grateful for the fact that I worry about such possibilities. If I didn't, I would have no path to consider.

I don't know whether you're familiar with Plato's Euthyphro. If I recall correctly, it's one of the earlier dialogues where, I believe, Socrates' thought suffers less form being filtered through Plato's own philosophical outlook, especially the idea of forms, than the later works (especially “The Republic”) . Summarising from distant memory: Socrates happens to be on the steps to a local branch of law enforcement where he bumps into Euthyphro. Euthyphro, as it turn out, is there to turn in his father for death of a slave due to “neglect of care” (and not deliberate murder as such). Socrates, ever the questioner, grills him with respect to his motives: upon what moral authority does he believe his actions in turning his farther over to the authorities are correct? Eventually, in the ensuing stream of deliberation, Socrates points him to the following dilemma: “Is what is morally good commanded by God because it is morally good, or is it morally good because it is commanded by God?”

In other words: is the morally good determined by reference to independent “laws”, “rules” or, in platonic terminology, “forms” - or is its authority determined by its being prescribed by divine authority alone? The first horn of the dilemma raises the problem of interpretation (you should be familiar with this through the writings of Donald Davidson); if morality is just a question of following immutable law-like commandments, then how come it isn't obvious to all of us? How could there be disagreement between us? Well, we could disagree in our respective interpretations, but to what common standard could we turn to for arbitration? The second horn of the dilemma: we turn to God's, which, at first blush, seems to provide an answer to this by fixing the interpretation as merely being subject to the fixing God's will. The problem with this horn, similar to the first, is by what means do we agree on the correct interpretation of God's will? The problem with both horns, is that abdicate responsibility for personal decision-making by being passive modes of engagement with the morality as “revealed” by the various incommensurate attempts at interpreting God's will.

So is there an alternative? One that does not collapse into moral relativity – anything goes? I believe there is. Without turning this is into a lengthy exposition, I am reminded of a quote - its exact wording I do not recall - in a book from Davidson by one of his students, Akeel Bilgrami, and I paraphrase: “disagreement is only possible where there are ground for agreement.” In other words, we cannot dispute something unless there are agree grounds/forms of reasoning, otherwise we are talking past each other. I believe, while the grounds of morality are not “fixed in stone” nor are they merely arbitrary, rather are the result of active engagement, discussion and argument. It is not a random process. One cannot separate morality form the active engagement of reason. Aristotle talks about arête “personal excellence” in that, while one can never achieve perfection (for the pursuit of excellence in morality is not static), it is something we should aspire to and aspiration is the highest form of moral good with respect to this endeavor. Whilst we cannot achieve Godhood, nonetheless, we should make the best with what we've got to form our ideals, without succumbing to an impossible – unachievable Utopian - idealisation of the world.

Finally, on my non-standard reading of Euthyphro, at the end of the dialogue, Euthyphro, unable to answer Socrates probing questions, make some excuse why he has to leave and departs without turning over his father over to the authorities. To my mind, what Socrates demonstrates here, is morality in action, he gets Euthyphro to examine the justification behind his apparently surety of moral conviction. Morality is hardly ever – if never – clear cut, it has to be continuously wrestled with and won and thus our conscience is defined by the act of defining itself.

Without my doing the necessary book work, I hope this makes some kind of sense.

“Is what is morally good commanded by God because it is morally good, or is it morally good because it is commanded by God?”

I believe...and I think it would be hard to imagine otherwise with an omnipotent God...that the moral good is an expression of God's nature. In other words it would be illogical, impossible even, for God to promote any other morality...there's no choice to it.

As far as interpretation goes...it seems to me that the consistency of what is considered moral throughout history is astonishing. You can find numerous numerous variations on a or b...but, you'd be hard pressed to find a culture that disregarded a and b all together.

"In other words, we cannot dispute something unless there are agree grounds/forms of reasoning, otherwise we are talking past each other."

I agree with this...the problem is whether these forms are recieved wisdom or eternal Truth. I have a hard time seeing the space for something between arbitrary and set in stone...

Unless...it's over a.1 and a.2...if you follow me.

Marriage for example...a Xhosa cheif has two wives. Not acceptable in the West (at least for now :) ), but, in his culture he has not broken the law, or mores, or disrespected the institution of marriage, he has not taken any woman he wants, etc. He has followed the guidlines for honoring his wife/wives and the institution as he understands it...a remains intact.

I should preface my remark with an apology: I kinda rushed my my previous response and, as a consequence, some of the my arguments are just too compressed; it's difficult because, to give justice to the issues you raise would, in fairness, take a much lengthier exposition which I just don't have the time to make good on. It's bad habit of mine, especially since one of the ideas I had in mind for this blog was provide the occasional, but, hopefully accessible nugget of philosophical debate (I must admit that the whole thing started off as in-joke between a couple of friends and, as such, there's no obvious context for a lot of the postings). Also, on reeding, there are a lot of typos.

“As far as interpretation goes...it seems to me that the consistency of what is considered moral throughout history is astonishing. You can find numerous numerous variations on a or b...but, you'd be hard pressed to find a culture that disregarded a and b all together.”

That's quite big claim and, as such, would require an awful lot analysis to back it up. Having said that, I minded to agree. At least it strikes me as a hypotheses that could be defended and I have read such attempts. I suspect where we would disagree – perhaps not entirely – on why this might be so. Indeed, I suspect the why, though I confess providing such an account , at least to satisfaction may be beyond my ability as it would require mastering various academic disciplines and sifting through an awful of evidence, which, in some cases, would, no doubt, be heavily disputed. Instead, I will merely take my cue from suggested path of resolution:

“I believe...and I think it would be hard to imagine otherwise with an omnipotent God...that the moral good is an expression of God's nature. In other words it would be illogical, impossible even, for God to promote any other morality...there's no choice to it.”

One of things I really enjoy about reading the Old Testament is the moral dilemmas God seems to be continuously faced with and that, oddly, he doesn't always seem to solve satisfactorily: I think Abraham's pleading to spare the inhabitants of Sodom and Gomorrah and also the apparently genocidal story of Noah are two salient examples. Now it may be there's a reasonable explanation of God's actions in both cases, but it's not clear the exact moral justification for His actions. As a consequence, it hard to say upon what motivation/reasoning He is acting. Our very inability to do so either suggests: such explanations are beyond human comprehension, which leaves us with problem of us – as humans – having limited access to sphere of moral judgement or that God, Himself, is also subject to the quagmire of moral conflict. In any case, let me approach this from a slightly different angle and this is from the “Problem of Evil” - I discuss this in a “dramatised” form on another blog entry here:

http://tasteoftheson.blogspot.com/2010/07/problem-of-evil.html

This argument has its origins in Voltaire's novel Candide:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Best_of_all_possible_worlds

PS. Don't talk to me about cake. I need to lose a "few" pounds; I went home for Christmas: my mum's cooking is to die for.

Regarding the deletes: It keeps telling me my post are too long ... so I have broken them done only to find they have actually posted and so there were a lot repeated sections: hopefully I've managed to edit this correctly.

My birthday was yesterday...My sister and my wife made cake...I'm on the verge of gluttony here...I brought half of one to work today.

It's always been my understanding that before the new covenant that man (because of sin without possibility of redemption) got less than he deserved in regards to rough treatment...but, it's an interesting question that might be worth the Rectors time on Sunday (he'll be pleased that I've moved off pestering him about the impossibility of God having what we would recognize as a sense of humor).

As for the compressed nature of the conversation...it would be difficult to hash this out in person...nevermind this medium. I'm sure I'm missing things.

“[T]he impossibility of God having what we would recognize as a sense of humor”

HAHA! You can't leave it hanging like that! I suppose, intuitively, one must concede that at least God has a pretty sophisticate comprehension of human humour, since to suppose otherwise would be to deny His being able accessing certain areas of human activity, viz., for want of a better terminology, “the comedic”. It would also follow, that if one allows the sphere of the comedic to overlap with that of the ethical – say, for example, cheering someone up or, say, abusing someone though caricaturing them out of solely malicious intent – that God, if He didn't have a sense of the comedic in humans, would be unable distinguish certain moral contexts. Your brief proposition would not, obviously – on the surface of it - rule out that He does.

However, I'm not sure you can both claim that God does have a sense of humour and, simultaneously, claim we would be unable IN PRINCIPLE to recognise it. At best one might make the claim: God understands our humour and, therefore, has a sense of our humour, but, because God is much more vastly sophisticated than us, then his grasping the full extent of sense of humour (comedic sensibilities) may be beyond our grasp. Now here's why I invoke the IN PRINCIPLE clause, it may be because of our human limitations – capacity for vast amounts of knowledge, memory and so on – that we couldn't grasp His more sophisticated “jokes”, but that is not to infer that His humour is somehow of altogether different kind/order. This is subtle point, so let me try a slightly different angle: there are element of the comedic we could share with God, just not the totality of his humour.

There is a further complication: without the associated conventional traits of human-to-human contact with respect the humorous, such as smiling, laughing, etc. etc., how would we recognise that He was being “funny”? Again, this would not necessarily mean (IN PRINCIPLE) we don't share a sense of humour with God, rather it is difficult (if near impossible) for us to grasp when He is employing it. Back to the problem of interpretation (especially in absence of the “normal” behavioural cues).

You've got me started now – I'm wondering if my cat has a sense of humour? I guess the closest thing would be a sense of playfulness. She certainly has a sense of mealtime.

Finally, I would be interested in your further thoughts on how the New Covenant works (theologically speaking), since the fact that it replaces the old version seems to implicitly recognise that, previously, we didn't the most moral moral deal, i.e. “man (because of sin without possibility of redemption) got less than he deserved in regards to rough treatment.” This might shed some light of the Euthyphro dilemma. Possibly.

Many happy returns.

PS. I'm British so my spellings may be slightly different of certain worlds - at least my US spell checker would suggest this (and that's my story and I'm sticking with it).

I'm a Southerner or Southroner...and we used to spell things correctly before the War. Then we were invaded by an army of New England school marms during Reconstruction. Evidently part of being reconstructed was learning their peculiar way of spelling things. I can't spell on the fly anyway, so....

On the sense of humor...I believe you are correct in that God recognizes our sense of humor. How could it be otherwise...and Jesus (speaking of God as a Christian...and not as a theorhetical concept) seems to have used humor. Get the beam out of your eye before worrying about the spec in your brothers, etc.

Where I have trouble..is in light of why we laugh. There's a certain amount of ignorance, or misinterpretation, or suprise involved in what makes us laugh. How could God not know where a joke is headed? It is more of a technical question than a philosophical one :).

My understanding is that Jesus literally covers the sins of man...otherwise God could not tolerate our presence.Jesus comes and makes the problem explicit...if you lust you're an adulterer. In other words after thousands of years of religion trying to wall off sin with layer upon layer of laws...Jesus makes it clear that it is our desires that are the problem, that are flawed. His sacrafice is suficient to cover those sins...erase them so to speak and make us acceptable to God.

“Where I have trouble..is in light of why we laugh. There's a certain amount of ignorance, or misinterpretation, or surprise involved in what makes us laugh. How could God not know where a joke is headed? It is more of a technical question than a philosophical one :).”

Well, I started off with an essay, but ditched it in favour of trying to sound-out your contention that God has a sense of the comedic – humour - we would have difficulty recognising. While this might appear to be drifting into the realms of “off topic”, I think there may be strong parallels between your contention and the long-standing issues of our inability, in many instances, to comprehend God's sense of morality, to make sense of tragic everyday human events, that lead them to ask: “Why would God let this happen?”

There are some things we can say about the techniques employed in humour, for example, misdirection and the subversion of expectations, together with a certain sensitivity to audiences and their attitudes, including the wider socio-political context. However, the idea that we could codify humour in a set of axioms that would constitute a theory that could describe and predict – or at least anticipate – any comedic context, is somewhat doubtful. Note: if such a theory existed, it would merely me a subset of a larger theory of meaning and language.

Now, is such an ambiguity present in God's appreciation of the comedic? You seem to suggest not. If, indeed, God is able to predict – foresee - any comedic situation “beat us to the punchline” so-to-speak - then His sense of humour would be tempered by a certain asymmetry, viz., while he could make us laugh, given his intimate knowledge of what we find funny, it would seem that our ability to make God laugh is hobbled by our inability to surprise Him. On that line of thinking, perhaps it is reasonable to suppose:

“[T]he impossibility of God having what we would recognize as a sense of humour.”

I am not convinced. Without going in to detail, my feeling is that there is a temptation to take the notion of perfection out of context; what is perfect, one may suppose, is the best given the circumstances – whatever they may be. For example there is no all-perfect tool, but there are tools perfect for certain situations – this is not necessarily a limitation. Let me put it a different way, since “man is made in the image of God”, I don't see why that image may not also help – not quite perfect – but “improve” God. If God is intimately connected with everything, are we not (“actively” as opposed to “passively”) part of that? I'm just putting that forward as an (oblique) observation.